The Balkans still offer Mediterranean scenery at a fraction of Western European prices, provided you route around the few spots that have caught up.
Kotor Bay in Montenegro looks like a scaled-down fjord dropped into the Adriatic, ringed by limestone peaks and an old walled town at its base, and a bed in the old town still costs far less than a comparable stay on the Croatian coast an hour's drive north. Sarajevo, Mostar, and Albania's Riviera around Sarandë round out a loop that can be done almost entirely by regional bus for a fraction of what a similar distance costs in Italy or Spain.
Cross-border buses are the budget backbone here, run by small regional operators rather than the big pan-European lines, and tickets are best bought a day ahead at the station rather than online, where prices are sometimes inflated for foreign card payments. Border crossings on these routes can run long — pack snacks and expect delays rather than treating the timetable as exact.
Eat at a buregdžinica for burek, the flaky meat- or cheese-filled pastry sold by weight that functions as the region's staple budget meal, and pair it with ayran, a salted yoghurt drink, for well under a couple of euros. Coastal Montenegro and Croatia's islands get expensive in July and August; shift the same trip to May, June, or September and both prices and crowds drop substantially while the weather stays warm enough to swim.
